Best National Electronica

Prodigy

Guitar techs By the time the British techno-punk outfit Prodigy released The Fat of the Land on Madonna's Maverick label last July, the disc's first two singles ("Firestarter" and "Breathe") had already been on the British charts for the better part of the year, and the "Firestarter" video had been in heavy rotation on MTV since the previous Christmas. Success in the post-grunge US market was more or less a foregone conclusion. The real question on people's minds was, would Prodigy be able to effectively spearhead an electronica invasion of the formerly guitar-dominated American airwaves? A year later there's no definitive answer to that, owing largely to the fact that Prodigy's mix of rock guitars, techno beats, and clowning frontmen fits neatly into an alt-rock aesthetic already accustomed to the industrialized techno-goth and -metal of Nine Inch Nails, Ministry, Filter (remember them?), and Marilyn Manson. The Fat of the Land simply narrowed the gap between the ravers and the moshers, the dance floor and the pit. Ultimately, Prodigy had been elected to set off a techno revolution just as the band was doing away with most of what makes techno revolutionary -- from the endless linear progressions of beats to the faceless presentation of sample-collage compositions. But they still put on a hell of show.

-- Matt Ashare